A fusion of biography and history, art and politics, told through the lives branching off one family tree.

In Fear the Mirror, Cora SirÉ brings together thirteen stories of moments that have marked the dark intersections within her own history. A feminist mother who fled Estonia. A father who arrived in Canada with nothing but a violin. A Catalan boy whose parent is dying. A love triangle among novelists. Bodies stolen in the night and never found. Blending essay, memoir, and fiction, the MontrÉal author draws on her encounters in Latin America and elsewhere to compose loving and conflicted portraits—of family members, writers, filmmakers, and gravediggers—culminating in the persistent legacies and strange alchemies that haunt the person she sees in the mirror. In this masterful fifth book, SirÉ has written her most urgent, beguiling, and personal work to date.